What the Census Says About Us
“Carroll Gardens is getting whiter! Williamsburg is getting smarter! And the Park Slope baby boom is real!” That’s the Brooklyn Paper’s three exclamation point recap of the census data released yesterday; we’re still a very diverse borough, but the make-up has shifted. Richer, whiter folks have displaced minority families since 2000 in neighborhoods west of…
“Carroll Gardens is getting whiter! Williamsburg is getting smarter! And the Park Slope baby boom is real!” That’s the Brooklyn Paper‘s three exclamation point recap of the census data released yesterday; we’re still a very diverse borough, but the make-up has shifted. Richer, whiter folks have displaced minority families since 2000 in neighborhoods west of Prospect Park, from the Slope to Red Hook, which “had the biggest jump in median household income — 23 percent, to $77,784 — partly because nearly a fifth of black and Hispanic families, who earn half as much as their white counterparts, left during the seven-year period.” Carroll Gardens, Park Slope and Cobble Hill have indeed had baby booms — “The number of children under-5 shot up 35 percent in the area” — and around 80 percent more college graduates have flocked to Williamsburg than lived there in 2000. Neighborhoods further out in Brooklyn grew more diverse, with white populations shrinking slightly in Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst, and the Asian population increasing by 34 percent. The Brooklyn Eagle looked at the number of “now married” and “never married” folks (roughly the same size), and found that two-parent families are most common, followed by female-headed families. “Ninety-one percent of those surveyed lived in the same house or apartment they lived in a year ago,” they write, signaling that perhaps folks are moving less, or the influx of folks from other boroughs and states is slowing. And the highest concentration of rents fall between $750 and $1,500; must still be plenty of rent stabilized pads out there.
Census ‘Community Survey’ Reveals Facts About Brooklyn [Brooklyn Eagle]
Making Census of Brooklyn [Brooklyn Paper]
Photo by heimdalsgata.
MM…correct…it wasn’t the white necomers or the black necomers that cleaned up or gentrified; call it what you may, Bed Stuy. It was the black folk that lived there for countless generations. Frankly if more white folk newcomers moved onto my block I think it wouldn’t be cared for to the extent that it is now.
on a wolff range, presumably.
“The “nice White People” are going to call U-Hall and pack up and leave! Then our neighborhood will go back to the “Bad old days”! This is my main problem with Gentrification! When things don’t “work out” and the Asshats leave everything get worse!!!!!!”
Ok, this one I’m not going to leave alone, or laugh off. What, your self hatred is showing. You spend so much time being a homophobic, misogynist, racist that you’ve decided that you might as well hate everyone equally. If every non-black person left Crown Heights, Bed Stuy, or any other predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood tomorrow, they’d do just fine. Are you insinuating that black people are all so irresponsible and helpless that we’d all revert to chaos and anarchy? I don’t think so.
Everyone I know, who has either held on during the bad old days, and is still hanging on, or chose to come back or join our communities since then, is very, very committed to not only keeping what we have now, but improving it. For ourselves and families, not to make it attractive and desireable to others. Because we, as a black community, are certainly not all poor, not criminal, not all unemployed, and not all concerned with impressing other people. We in Crown Heights North, did not work like dogs to get our neighborhood landmarked to impress white people, or make it “good enough” for them to want to move here. We, and by which I mean an organization that was about 95% black at the time, did it for US, because we are proud of our neighborhood, and wanted it protected, for now, and for our future generations, no matter who happens to live there.
I resent the implication that we, as a people, cannot be self sufficient, or self governing, or cannot be trusted with our own communities. I expect that from some of the less enlightened who post here. You demean yourself even further, if that’s possible, by doing it yourself.
Montrose Morris, PBA
BRG are you Kanarsee Indian???
“I bet she’s making “little people” cookies right now and enjoys biting off their heads!!! ”
Heh heh heh! I’ll never tell!
Nokilissa, I think it’s the bent elbows. When I push my sister’s stroller my arms are straight because I’m so tall. In fact, it’s kind of annoying to push a stroller for any length of time because the handles are soo low.
I don’t mind the scruffy so much – Better Half vacilates between a ‘well-scrubbed & trimmed’ and a ‘I just rolled out of bed, hair sticking up, and haven’t seen a razor in a month’ – but on him it’s not a pose!
“mopar…she met me before she became the wife and knew the whole story. I’ll be the godfather. It’s a hispanic thing. White people wouldn’t understand!!!!”
Poor What just had a heart attack.
I’ll bet he cooks too. And not just grills, but cooks.
mopar…she met me before she became the wife and knew the whole story. I’ll be the godfather. It’s a hispanic thing. White people wouldn’t understand!!!!
And the Hipanic population is growing as well. My Mexican bf is built like the proverbial “brick shithouse.”
ooooooh! Stop it Bayridgegirl! You’re killin’ me here.
I bet he does.